The Nitemare Skull
by The Shadow Of Dusk
Summary: As Harry struggles to find out who the strange person he keeps dreaming of is, he finds himself in a horrible nightmare which slowly becomes reality.
1. Prologue

As Harry turned to gaze back into the dimly lit chamber, his eyes widened in terror at what lay before him. He moved a hand over his mouth to prevent himself from losing control of his churning stomach and he quickly turned away, so as not to gaze upon that which horrified him most. Hermione's cold body rested in a pool of her own dark blood with the candlelight flickering upon her pale face. The room had grown much colder with the eerie silence and the sight of her eyes popping out of her head and a look of sheer terror upon her face. It was obvious she had died quickly and painlessly, but just her appearance made being there very strange and awkward.

The whole chamber was filled with the scent of rotting flesh and the burning of wax and oils. Shadows flashed quickly against the walls while the sound of claws against the old castle's structure echoed emptily. Harry couldn't help but jump at the slightest movement, or even the smallest sound. The clawing only grew louder and louder and a low growling, hungry and vicious, became entirely too audible against Harry's left ear.

The hot breath of the beast was reeking with blood and a fowl odor, not much different from smoldering brimstone. Harry turned pale when he felt thick fur against his hand. His eyes had yet to adjust to the dim lighting in the room and his body had gone cold and rigid. He reached behind him slowly, groping in the darkness and catching a tuft of hair in his fingers...

The growling against his ear became a deep snarl, the feeling of the skin of a snout being reeled back to reveal what could have been pictured as many white teeth, ground into points and dangerously sharpened. Harry turned slowly, catching a glimpse of the keen, bright yellow eyes of the beast, the pupils serpent-like. It blinked once, the eye-lids coming in from the sides instead of up and down like any usual creature.

A small tune, almost as clear as the snarl in Harry's ear, began to play. It was a melancholy tune that made his eyes fill with tears before he lowered his head and was enveloped in darkness...


	2. The Fragmented Dream

Time had stopped completely. There were no breezes ruffling the leaves of trees, no crickets chirping in the summer night. It seemed much darker now than it had before. Not even the moon was showing through and no sinister clouds lurked in the sky… It was all too peaceful then and the feeling was suffocating. This odd sensation of emptiness was deep within his gut and his breaths were heavy and long, almost like sighs…

Tonight was the night it had happened… It was the day that he was born and celebrated every year monotonously… His vision was crystal clear, clearer than it ever had been in his entire life. He moved back from the window sill, his arms folded neatly over his built chest, the sinewy muscles bulging and tanned as if he'd lived in the sunlight his entire life.

His deep blue- grey eyes seemed to glow with an eerie aura of gold. The corner of his lips, pursed in somewhat of a pout, where faded and dark, almost a darker purple than lavender… He ran a hand through his curly blonde hair, the nails on his fingers somewhat long and pointed. His voice was smooth, seductive and silky as he let out a low whisper…

_**"…And so we pass through endless dreams, watching life pass us by… our souls we lose, our minds we're lost… all for the sake of the masks we wear…"**_

And at these words, the entire world began to spin. The colors changed relentlessly, swirling and mixing into several different hues and shades until finally everything faded into black. When the universe had returned instantaneously, the scene was set upon a young couple beneath a tree in the Hogwarts school yard. They were smiling and laughing, just as any normal couple does.

"Oh, you're so wonderful!" said a tiny voice, soft and tender like a mother's. It radiated through ears unseen and unfelt as the girl, her hair long and black, her eyes bloody red and her body short but slender, leaned in and kissed someone who was not actually there at all. The moment she had kissed that which had been seen before, the world shifted into a candlelit room.

The girl stood in the corner, hands at her face and blood across her cheeks, screaming and wailing. Through eyes unknown, a single hand was raised towards her, the fingers small and tiny, possibly even childish… Small whimpering sounds rang out loud and clear into the illusory dimension as tears flooded into the small window to the world seen. Soon, everything became nothing more than a fog and melted once again into the shadows…

* * *

Harry was awakened, screaming out the word _"Mother!"_ with his arm and hand outstretched as if reaching for the ceiling as he lie there in bed. Beads of cold sweat ran down his face, his eyes wide and his whole body shaking… Slowly, he rose from the bed, his limbs weak and his breathing raspy and harsh… A single hand rises to his head as he begins to calm down, thinking carefully over the dream while it was still fresh in his mind…

_"A dream…",_ he murmurs softly into the air… his gropes about for his glasses, eventually finding them on his bedside table and putting them on. He hadn't noticed the stained glass window beside him earlier, depicting a dragon encircling a young beautiful maiden. The room felt unfamiliar… his glasses, he realized, were not the same shape as they had always been. His fingers were longer, more masculine. The adrenaline was getting to him now.

He thrusts away the blankets on the bed only to find himself in a pair of black satin pajamas, the bedding made of black and red silk… He tears open the shirt of his pajamas, tracing over the defined muscles on his chest and abs… In a fit of sheer terror, he places his hands upon his head and curls up in a corner, screaming like a maniac into the indefinite territory he had somehow entered… His voice was deeper, much unlike his own, and while he screamed was even and resounding.

_"Who in the hell am I!"_

And that was when we realized… he was caught inside of a nightmare. The only sound he could perceive was that of a music box, the song melancholy and slow …A notebook had appeared mysteriously in his hands and he instinctively opened to the first page, only to read…

_**" The endless night, shattered in the painting of untold beauty… but beauty is vain, such as the night is cruel and sinister… the shards of the sunlight cannot radiate, even when put together… and so we will wander together… at long last… a complete soul…"**_


	3. Confusion

As he sat, confused and ragged in a dark corner, a knock came at the door, a quiet rapping like rings against glass. There was a long pause, a heavy silence for several moments before the tiny tapping came again, more insistent this time.

"_Master... Are you awake, my liege?"_ came the delicate voice from behind the cherry oak doors. A loud clicking echoed through the silence, breaking his trance as a young girl entered into his room. The instant he saw her he felt his face become warm all the way to his ears.

She stood there in the doorway, her hands small and delicate with long thin fingers, and many bracelets dangling from her tiny wrists. Her eyes were the deepest of azures, illuminating soft shades of green and white and her silky black hair fell into curls and waves all across her face, framing the radiantly peach skin. She passed him a grin, her full pink lips thinning as she did so and he felt his face become even warmer.

He struggled to compose himself and rose up, coughing into a closed fist to clear his throat.

"I….um…well, yes. I'm awake, obviously…" he said, losing his composure all too quickly, his voice cracking at first.

The girl only stood there, giggling softly… She then turned on her heel, a more graceful seeming movement than it should have been, and the silently closes the large door behind her. He stood there in a light daze, his eyes somewhat wider than before… He strode over back to the window and stared out behind the curtains. What had once been beautiful was now plagued with darkness and the entire window was shrouded in it, making an impenetrable fog.

"Where am I?" He pondered, incidentally tapping his fingers against his chin before there came another quiet rapping at his door….

* * *

"Is he alright?"

"I'm not really sure…" said quiet voices through the young boy's head. His thick, tangled, short black hair was matted against his forehead with beads of icy sweat… He sat up, a pair of round duct-taped glasses being handed to him from his left. He put them on, his blurry vision being cleared away as he stared up into two faces, unfamiliar to him.

The girl before him smiled a bit, wearing what appeared to be school robes. Her thick brown hair was semi-tangled, but he disregarded her and looked to the boy beside him. The boy had freckles, was slightly pale and had a stupid look on his face. His hair was the oddest shade of red that the boy had ever seen.

He rises slowly from on the ground of what seemed to be a train, bombarded with "Are you alright?" and "here eat this!" It made no sense to him and a white hot burning sensation coursed through his aching head. He stood up, with a bit more help and was seated quietly beside a window, but as he looked to gaze out of it, his green eyes widened in terror and he began to touch all across his face, panicking before he belted out a scream.

_"What in the seven hells happened to me?!"_


End file.
